CBS reveals the identities of 'Survivor: China's sixteen castaways

CBS has revealed the identities of the sixteen castaways who will be competing on Survivor: China.

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Survivor: China -- the fifteenth edition of its long-running reality competition series -- will premiere on Thursday, September 20 at 8PM ET/PT.

According to CBS, Survivor: China will begin with the castaways leaving the bustle of downtown Shanghai and traveling to HuangPu Mountain's Mi Tuo Temple. Once there, they will participate in a Buddhist ceremony and be instructed to "leave all of their worldly possessions behind."

After leaving the temple, the castaways will transported to Zhelin Lake, an enormous man-made reservoir lake in China's Jiangxi Province, and become "marooned with the clothes on their back at two separate islands." One tribe will be called Fei Long ("Flying Dragon"), the other will be called Zhan Hu ("Fighting Tiger"). Each castaway will also be given a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which will serve as "tribe motivation and assistance throughout the game," according to CBS.

As Survivor producer Mark Burnett revealed last month, Survivor: China will not feature an Exile Island concept. Instead, the tribe that wins each Reward Challenge will be allowed to "kidnap" a member of the losing tribe. The kidnapped tribe member will remain with the other tribe until the next Immunity Challenge, at which time they will re-join their original tribe.

Similar to this spring's Survivor: Fiji edition, Survivor: China will feature one hidden Immunity Idol "hidden" ("in plain sight," according to CBS) at each camp. However since Survivor: China won't have an Exile Island, the clues about the idols' locations won't be tied to an Exile Island visit.

Instead, each "kidnapped" castaway will receive a clue note before leaving the Reward Challenge site -- but rather than getting to keep the note for themselves, they will be instructed to privately give it to the enemy tribe member of their choice. After reading the clue, the enemy castaway will have to decide whether they want to keep the information to themselves or share it with the rest of their tribe.

Survivor: China was filmed in late June and July. The production marked the first time that a major American television program filmed an entire season on location in the country.